In general, in troubleshooting of an IT system, when detecting a drop in response or other trouble, in general, the method is employed of repeatedly sampling and analyzing information relating to the location of the trouble to identify the cause of the trouble.
In the past, the information sampled was determined by knowhow of the actual SE in charge of the troubleshooting. Therefore, troubleshooting required an advanced level of skill on the part of the SE. Depending on the skill of the SE, a long time was required until the trouble was resolved so there was an issue in terms of time and cost.
Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2003-179601 discloses an invention having as its object the provision of a transmission network system enabling identification of the location of trouble in the network without depending on the skill of the manager. The transmission network system described in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2003-179601 is provided with a plurality of detectors for detecting trouble in a plurality of component elements forming the network and emitting alarm information, a correspondence relationship storage unit storing in advance information illustrating a correspondence relationship between the plurality of component elements of the transmission network system and a plurality of network elements set in advance grouping hierarchically the plurality of component elements, and a ripple relationship storage unit storing information illustrating the ripple relationship of trouble among a plurality of network elements. Further, the transmission network system is provided with a narrowing means for narrowing down the network elements in which the trouble spot may be included from alarm information emitted from the detectors and a trouble spot identifying means for identifying a trouble spot from the network elements narrowed down by the narrowing means and information stored in the correspondence relationship storage unit and ripple relationship storage unit.
However, the invention described in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2003-179601 detects trouble in the transmission network system and issues alarm information to identify a trouble spot. It does not present candidate remedies to the SE from incidents of remedies stored for trouble occurring in the past by having the SE input one or more symptom(s) of the trouble. For this reason, since the invention described in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2003-179601 does not store incidents of remedies for trouble occurring in the past, there is no learning function and the ability to detect trouble is not improved over time.
In recent years, a “troubleshooting system” for resolving trouble in a short time regardless of the skill of the SE has been devised. This troubleshooting system resolves trouble in a short time by enabling use of knowhow unique to SEs performing troubleshooting and other implicit knowledge as shared knowledge of SEs. This troubleshooting system stores troubleshooting knowledge prepared from past troubleshooting incidents etc., has the SE input information expressing the symptom of the phenomenon of the trouble etc., searches through the stored troubleshooting knowledge at that time, and presents to the SE candidates for the causes or remedies correlated with the phenomenon. However, when there are a plurality of candidate causes or remedies for certain trouble, the SE has to determine which remedy to try first from the candidate remedies. He must repeatedly select candidate remedies until finding the cause of the trouble.